


A Pretty Thing to Think About

by mightbeanasshole



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:34:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightbeanasshole/pseuds/mightbeanasshole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tired of only ever seeing Jesse on stolen time, Saul negotiates his way into a real night together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Saul finds him out back behind the office.

Jesse is propped up against the dirty wall in the alley – maybe a little dangerously close to that dumpster, Saul thinks, but the way his mouth is screwed up around a cigarette is screaming ten types of danger, and for once Saul decides to keep his mouth shut.

There’s an attorney-sized empty space against the wall next to Jesse. Some piece of Saul knows that’s probably not an accident – that the outburst back there was more of an escape tactic and an invitation than it had been a legitimate expression of Jesse’s frustration. Jesse had known what the little half-tantrum would earn him and what it would leave in his wake. He’d known that Saul would roll his eyes at Jesse’s back as he pushed out of the office, that Walt would scoff and feign righteous indignance before sending Saul out to conduct the touchy feely negotiation of talking Jesse down, gentling him and wrangling him back into the office.

Jesse’s not as dumb as he looks. He’s not dumb at all. And though Saul won’t quite admit to himself that Jesse manufactured the whole mid-meeting outburst to steal a minute with him  _sans grimacing cueball,_ it had certainly been a setup to something and not the main performance.

So he joins Jesse, back to the wall, the length of their arms pressed softly together. The frown cracks instantly and Jesse smiles in his peripheral vision. The formerly crackling air goes still between them and Saul has to work his mouth around to extinguish the dumb smile that wants to seize him. 

Jesse is pleased that his escape plan worked. So is Saul.

There’s a moment of deja vu for Saul, here in the alley, in the shade. He has the impulse to do something he hasn’t done in a long time, and the realization makes something in his chest lurch. He turns the crank of an invisible vice in his solar plexus until the lurch is gone and gives in, ignoring the bittersweet muscle memory, reaching to pluck the cigarette off of Jesse’s bottom lip and lifting it to his own mouth.

Jesse lets him. He turns a little, dragging the sleeve of his hoodie over one eye and examining Saul with the other as he takes a drag.

Saul coughs, surprised.

“The hell is this?” Saul asks, holding out the cigarette and examining it. “You don’t smoke menthols.”

“They were outta my brand,” Jesse says with a shrug. He produces the pack from a pocket and draws out a cigarette, apparently set on dooming Saul to the rest of the one he’s stolen.

“I really don’t want –” but Saul’s protests are too late. Jesse’s already got the second one lit.

“Yours now,” Jesse says, tilting his head sarcastically, like making him smoke the cigarette is teaching him a lesson. Saul frowns around a second draw.

“It’s like smoking a Tic Tac,” Saul says. “My clothes are gonna smell like this now, y’know.”

“Better than that whack aftershave.”

“Funny,” Saul says, dry. “Keep your eyes peeled for my dry cleaning bill in the mail.”

They’re both smiling. They smoke for a beat.

“So, back in there –” Saul says, smoke trailing after the gesture he’s making in the air.

“Yeah, no,” Jesse says, bobbing his head as if that explained something. “I just needed a break. I’m good.”

Saul chews on that for a second. That doesn’t ring entirely true – and he knows he should leave it alone, leave it at that, smoke the cigarette and share space for a moment. But it’s a sore spot, and Saul never had a talent for letting sore spots heal unfettered. He picks at it.

He pushes off the wall and gets into Jesse’s personal space, suddenly aware of the other man’s small frame, the inches of height Saul has on him. Jesse tilts his head up with an expression in his eyes that might be a question.

“You know, when you want a minute alone with me, you can just buy me dinner,” Saul says. His voice is dripping with charm, but Jesse just snorts, drops his eyes. Wrong move.

“Yeah.”

They both know it’s a lie – but it’s a pretty thing to think about.

A world without Walt where it really is as simple as that. A world where their moments together aren’t stolen from someone else, where their time together belongs to them, start to finish.

Sure. Maybe it would feature some of the same things at its heart: mutual sniping that dissolves into mouths that drag over each other, hands fumbling quick on belts. A rushed handjob in the car that escalates into Saul fucking down his throat, curling fingers into Jesse’s hair and repeating his name like it’s the last thing he knows. Jesse flushed and riding him in the office, clamping a hand too tight over Saul’s mouth to shut him up as Jesse works his hips and fucks the manic energy out of him.

Those things would be there because they’re just their style. It’s in the DNA of whatever it is that exists between them.

But there would be other things in that better world, too. There would be things Saul wants and Jesse deserves – like Jesse yawning and barefoot and not looking over his shoulder, digging knuckles into his eyes at the morning sunlight streaming through Saul’s windows. Things like Saul pressing a cup of strong coffee with too much sugar and a little bit of cream into Jesse’s hands – because in this better world, Saul knows how Jesse takes his coffee, his steak, his burger, how Jesse sleeps at night and what it’s like to wake up with him.

He’d know more about Jesse’s secrets than his cigarette brand, the syncopated way his hips start to stutter when he cums, how his voice goes creaky and weak when he’s been crying, and how his bruises bloom and then fade over the course of a week.

Jesse is examining the tip of a garish sneaker and Saul turns, lets his back drop against the wall again. 

They’re both too crooked. Their moments are contraband and that won’t change – but like the rest of the jagged landscape they’re navigating, Jesse and Saul will find their way.

\---

This isn’t where Jesse expected the minute alone together to go, and he frowns as Saul rests against the wall of the back of his office with a sigh.

Saul drops the mostly-spent cigarette and grinds it into the cracked asphalt with the heel of a shiny shit-brown loafer. He’s squinting off at nothing, straightening his spine, and slipping back behind a practiced neutral expression.  _Christ_  Jesse would take just about anything but neutrality right now. He’d rather go back into that nightmare of an office and sit hip to hip with Mr. White.

 _Fuck it,_  he thinks, dropping his own cigarette to the ground.

Before Saul can protest, Jesse’s there and tilting his head up to kiss him hard, curling a hand around one ugly lapel and closing his eyes and enjoying the shocked half-noise Saul makes at the contact before opening to him – and this is  _exactly_ why Jesse hadn’t just done this in the first place. Because as goddamned unlikely as they are, the moment one of them is dumb enough to start it up, neither one wants to back down or – God forbid – stop.

As if the stakes weren’t high enough.

This is how it had started and maybe this is how it’ll always go: Jesse moving rough and unexpected, Saul accepting with enthusiasm, and the two of them meeting in the middle to almost satisfy some need neither of them can quite find a vocabulary for. It’s a stupid, kamikaze attempt at  _having something_  that’s just theirs.

Jesse fights the feeling that they’re getting too good at this as Saul’s hands find the back of his hips. The feeling isn’t fresh and they’ve done this too much for it to feel novel — but it’s no less thrilling than it was the first time, and acknowledging that makes Jesse feel  _very_ uncomfortable, like there’s an iron band constricting around his chest.

This is the last thing either of them needs, he thinks, even as he catches Saul’s bottom lip between his teeth, as he leans more weight against him and ignores the way his heart is beating so hard it’s flopping around in his chest. They are a runaway fucking train and Jesse knows better. Saul is pliant and warm and familiar and responsive and Jesse pulls away anyway.

Saul doesn’t let him go far, holding him by the front of his hoodie.

“On second thought, forget buying me dinner,” Saul says, his voice a little rough. There’s something in his face that looks like a challenge. “Come to my place.”

Jesse snorts, backing up to break his grip and turning.

“Come over tonight,” he says louder, sounding final but – Jesse notes – careful not to  _order_  him. And that’s Saul all over, isn’t it?  _Careful_  with Jesse. It’s the kind of thing that has Jesse torn between leaning into a too-gentle touch and wanting to give Saul a bloody nose.

This is the first time he’s asked to see Jesse.

“Can’t tonight. We’re cooking,” Jesse says. He realizes that isn’t ‘no.’

“Tomorrow, then. Come on – pencil me into your dayplanner, you social butterfly.”

“That’s a shit idea,” Jesse says, trying not to smile at the little dig and the way Saul is moving his hands around as if feeling for an argument in thin air.

“Did you ever hear me claim it wasn’t a shit idea?” Saul asks, eyebrow raised.

“He knows where you live.”

“Then I’ll pick you up and we’ll shut the blinds.”

Jesse shuts his eyes and squeezes the back of his neck.

“Sneaking around? This is some real high school shit, Saul.”

“Yeah? And? Have you  _seen_  you? I’d have gotten my ass kicked in exchange for spending the night with you in high school, too.”

Jesse starts to frown and Saul holds a finger up in his face.

“Take the compliment – don’t be a punk, punk.”

“Bitch.”

They smile at each other for a beat, and Jesse can practically watch the wheels turning behind the other man’s eyes. Yeah, here comes the pitch…

“Listen. Say I put Mike on him for the night. Let him keep tabs on Heisendad for twelve hours so you can take a deep breath and maybe eat something that’s not off a value menu. No pressure – just a night off from being you.”

“Like he’s not gonna be pissed when he catches Mike outside his apartment? Be real.”

“If Walt hollers, I’ll say Mike was working protection detail. Say, I got wind of some hombres with an agenda in town and dispatched Mike to keep an eye out until things cooled down.”

“He’s still not gonna like it.”

“Then I will beg, I will implore on bended knee – Walt, please, in your vast wisdom grant me mercy for this one minor fuckup in our huge shared legacy of fuck ups,” Saul says, hands wringing together as he acts out the scene. “And then I’ll promise nicely not to do it again. But he’s not gonna catch Mike in the first place, so your point’s moot, kid.”

Jesse sniffs hard and looks everywhere but Saul’s face, like there might be an answer in the graffiti on the dumpster or the stained asphalt. Jesse’s fine with taking heat from Mr. White – but fuck up and drag Saul into this and Walt’s liable to move their lawyer into his little mental column of “expendables.” Jesse has more than enough shit on his conscience without adding Saul to the body count.

“No thanks, man.”

“ _No thanks man?_ ” Saul parrots back – and yeah, it sounds a little harsher when it’s repeated back to him, and Jesse is already rolling his eyes, retreating back towards sarcasm and frustration because it’s  _far_ safer than this fucking quicksand that Saul is pushing them towards.

Before Jesse thinks much further, though, Saul has his hands in Jesse’s hoodie, squeezing around his waist, letting some weight fall against him – and it’s as satisfying as it is annoying that Saul can change tactics like this, like he’s just switching gears on a goddamn bike. Jesse doesn’t like it when he knows he’s being played and he wouldn’t let anyone else in the world other than Saul do it and back up unscathed.

“Don’t you think you deserve to get fucked in a bed for once?” Saul asks, a little gravelly.

“I didn’t hear you complain about your office.”

Saul laughs against his ear.

“Trust me, I’ll take it where I can get it,” he says, and he’s holding Jesse up off the wall, pressing their hips together.

After a moment, though, he pulls back. Jesse waits for him to cajole or try a new tactic, but instead Saul just stands there, breathing even and looking every bit like he’s trying to work out a complicated math equation.

It makes Jesse feel a little off kilter to watch Saul fucking Goodman back down from something he wants, and the only time he’s seen Saul do it is when Mr. White goes steely and sharp, telling Saul  _absolutely not_. Even then, Saul always managed to dig in a few barbs and let their shared employer know that as their attorney, he’s advising strongly against whatever Walt is dead-set on.

That’s not the case here in the alley when it’s just them. It’s clear he won’t push Jesse to get what he wants. The man just looks  _sad._

He must solve that math equation, then, because he sighs hard and puts a hand on Jesse’s shoulder. It’s almost like Jesse can watch the man build up a fake wall between them as he prepares to go back into the meeting. He straightens his hair and pretends not to see Jesse frown.

“Think about it, yeah?”

Jesse just looks up at him. Maybe Saul can turn on a dime but Jesse feels dizzy as he tries to organize himself enough to face Mr. White again.

“You wanna lead the way?” Saul asks, holding the back door open.

At least once they’re back in there, Jesse won’t have to  _pretend_  to scowl.

\---

When the doorbell rings at dusk the next day, Jesse knows who it is without a second thought.

Yeah, it  _could_ be Badger and okay, it  _could_  be the geezer next door who always wants to give Jesse a hard time about landscaping and sure, it  _could_  be a pair of those randos on the bikes wearing black neckties.

But he already knows it’s not any of them. Because it’s Saul Goodman.

When he hears the bell chime, Jesse is fresh out of the shower – one of those overlong, scalding ones where he achieves some mental state that’s halfway between a buzz and zen meditation. His hair is still dripping a little, and he pulls on jeans between the bedroom and the front door, not bothering with a shirt.

Jesse flings the door open and meets Saul with an eye roll.

“You’re a prick, you know that?”

“I may have heard the term bandied about from time to time,” Saul says without missing a beat.

He doesn’t step forward to come inside, so Jesse pokes his head out the door to scan the street up and down. No Mr. White, no unfamiliar cars, no neighbors. He’s probably ok to let Saul stand here in the open for a minute with that conspicuous Cadillac – but they’d have to make it quick.

He sighs and stands back to look at Saul. Somewhere between the office and Jesse’s house, Saul has lost his jacket and tie – and in charcoal gray pants and a teal shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows, he’s approaching a normal outfit. He’s in the vicinity, at least.

“You almost look like a real human, without all the…” Jesse says, gesturing vaguely at Saul’s torso. “Y’know. All your bullshit.”

“Charming,” Saul says, raising his eyebrows and bobbing his head a little. “You should write greeting cards.”

Jesse pulls a face at him and doesn’t miss the way Saul looks at him like in spite of the vinegar, Jesse is the most adorable creature the lawyer has ever encountered. It  _ought_  to make his skin crawl. Instead, Jesse’s punching down some expanding warm feeling in the front of his chest.

“So… sup?” Jesse shrugs his bare shoulders and fans out a hand.

Saul frowns a little. Yeah, Jesse knows why he’s here – but he can’t suppress the impulse to drag the fumbling truth out of the other man.

“Funny thing,” Saul says – and from the way he smiles and bounces on his heels, Jesse knows he’s about to lie. “I got wind of some bad hombres with an agenda in town and dispatched Mike to keep an eye on Walt until things cooled down.”

Incredible. So much for the fumbling truth.

“You are fucking unbelievable, man – ”

Saul flashes his palms at Jesse and ducks his head a few inches, feigning innocence.

“I’m just here expressing deep concern for a valued client – totally professional, of course,” Saul says. His eyes drag down the front of Jesse’s body as he wets his lips, and Jesse is struck for the millionth time since this thing with them started that Saul Goodman is exactly as sleazy as he seems in his commercials. There’s something deeply wrong with Jesse, he thinks, because this doesn’t turn him off at all. 

“But what with me here now,” Saul continues, on a roll now, “and this entire you-without-a-shirt situation – and, hear me out, I’m just thinkin’ on my feet here – you should probably take a ride to my place with me and lay low for the night.”

Jesse leans against the doorframe. He hadn’t exactly been kicking himself for saying no the day before, but he had found himself wondering what tonight would’ve been like had he accepted. The fact that it would be a fucking disaster hadn’t done anything to extinguish Jesse’s curiosity about what the inside of Saul’s house (Apartment? Condo?) is like.

And hadn’t the invitation been the weird vote of confidence Jesse was waiting for, if he was gonna be honest with himself? To push himself on a weak man in his own tacky office (And car. And broom closet.) was one thing. Being  _invited over_ was another thing entirely.

Being invited over when the stakes are what they are is, frankly, something Jesse isn’t even ready to wrap his mind around. Saul clearly has a death wish, a sex addiction, or a real curiosity about Jesse. Maybe those options aren’t mutually exclusive.

(Some part of him wants to suggest that whatever Saul’s nursing right now is “affection” – but every time Jesse approaches the word, the visceral lurch that feels like missing a step at the bottom of a stairwell is enough to make him stop speculating.)

“Mike’s seriously watching Mr. White? Like, literally right now?”

“Literally like  _right now_. Scouts’ honor,” Saul says – and he can’t hide his excitement at what is definitely starting to sound like a  _maybe_  from Jesse. One corner of his mouth is curling up, out of his control. “Any movement towards your place or mine and he’ll call me. Worst case scenario, he’ll have to intercept. But it’s my professional opinion that the likelihood of Walt showing up unannounced is zilch at this juncture.”

It’s like he  _knows_. He probably  _does know_ – Saul is probably enough steps ahead of Jesse at all times to know that the only way he’s going to convince him is to show up like this and force a decision. The longer he stands there, the harder it is to say no. Send him away and then what? Watch television alone for another fifty hours? Microwave the  _delectable_  frozen potpie that’s been calling his name? The standard options for his evening seemed more appealing without Saul Goodman standing on his porch.

Jesse stares desperately past Saul and tries to find a single good reason – aside from the sex they’ll have – that this whole thing isn’t a  _real shit idea._

There are zero good reasons – but his brain is happy to provide at least a half a dozen bad ones: the image seared into his memory of Saul’s hand working around his cock with a confident flourish and the glint of that stupid pinkie ring, the way Saul looks younger and somehow genuinely himself as he squints and gasps when he’s close, and the hollow-bird-bones feeling Jesse gets when Saul bottoms out for the first time and fills him until he can’t breathe.

His whole body throbs in one tight pulse as he looks at the moron standing hopeful before him.

“Give me five minutes,” Jesse says, shutting the door in his face.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Saul waits for him in the car.

When Jesse emerges -- and it takes less than five minutes, in the end -- Saul has to stop himself from an obvious double take. Jesse's thin frame is draped in clothes that actually fit him, not swimming in three layers that offer up enough room for a few friends. He’s wearing a simple thermal shirt, gray and worn-in with jeans cut the way a normal human 20-something would wear them. Astounding, breathtaking, what a goddamned time to be alive.

Jesse catches him staring -- well, gazing, _admiring_ really -- as he takes the passenger seat, dropping a backpack to the floor.  
  
"Sup?"

He looks suspicious and Saul can't decide whether or not a compliment is going to make him feel antsy. His gut instinct is to wax poetic about the way that Jesse suddenly looks like he’s stepped out of some magazine that’s too cool for Saul to even be reading, but it comes out -- as things often do, when he talks to Jesse -- as sniping.  
  
"Just didn't realize you own clothes that aren't big enough for Huell. You incognito?"  
  
Jesse rolls his eyes.  
  
"I knew you were gonna rag on me about this."  
  
"Hey, Christ, no ragging," Saul says, offering his palms up. "If it's any consolation, the getup is giving me a partial."  
  
Jesse snorts and Saul pulls away from the curb.   
  
He _is_ excited, in spite of himself. The sun is just starting to set, and they have an entire night ahead of themselves -- and a morning. A _weekend fucking morning_. It's been an abysmally long time since Saul felt excited to be taking someone home -- and longer still since both parties were sober at the moment they made the decision. The thought should have him gulping back against anxiety, but the easy silence between them is soothing somehow.   
  
They drive quiet for a minute and Saul can't force himself to keep a poker face. He's fucking smirking. _So sue him. See you in court._   
  
Jesse has slumped down in his peripheral vision, throwing paranoid half-glances out of the tinted windows, and it's impossible not to linger on the way the fabric of his shirt sits against the curve of his belly. Kid's good-looking and he knows it, but to actually see him out of his typical attire -- for once not swimming in cotton splashed with screenprints from hell -- is an entirely new thing.   
  
Despite the fact that their office encounters are going for double digits, they've never seen each other naked, Saul thinks.

Tonight -- barring some natural disaster or the man-made kind Saul has a knack for -- _tonight he's going to see Jesse Pinkman naked.  
  
_ Ok, yes -- there it is. _Hello anxiety, old friend._  
  
\---  
There's a hard little knot that begins to grow in the pit of Jesse's gut as they turn further and further towards a nice part of downtown. His body grows heavier in the passenger seat, like maybe if he thinks about it hard enough, he can be absorbed into the smooth tan leather and disappear.   
  
Yeah he'd dressed up a little. Is that a crime? If Saul lives in an apartment, he doesn't want the guy's neighbors thinking Jesse is some weird trick or something -- not that it matters _because fuck people right?_

He shouldn't have done anything or changed anything or bothered with the plain clothes because now Saul thinks this is _special_ in some way – and no, nope, Jesse isn't even going to entertain the idea that this is in any way a thing that's out of the ordinary for either of them.

Jesse is used to being the most-hated asshole in his own neighborhood, but there's something about the idea of looking out of place where Saul lives that rubs him entirely the wrong way.

Seems like each turn springs a more expensive block of homes on Jesse. The sky has gone magenta with the sunset, like even the passage of time is somehow prettier when you live in a classy, cool neighborhood. That knot is growing exponentially, hardening and splintering off until his guts are full of gravel and they're pulling up in front of a townhouse that is really objectively _sickeningly_ nice: understated and xeriscaped and unornamented -- save for a rusted Helvetica house number -- in the sort of way that makes you _just know_ it's a disgustingly cool place to live. 

Not what Jesse was expecting out of the guy who wears eight clashing colors at once and pipes music into his waiting room that feels explicitly like a psychological terror technique.  

Jesse was prepared for a cramped, tacky apartment or a showy, ugly home. The modern townhouse is absolutely the worst case scenario.

Saul has already gotten out of the car, is ducking down with a look of half-concern on his face.

"That bad? I'll spring for a hotel room if that's more your speed."

"It's great, man," Jesse says, starting to move at last. "It looks really nice. I like the uh… cactuses."

"Lawns are for suckers," Saul says.  

\---

"Welcome to _Chez Goodman_ ," Saul says when they’re inside, tossing his keys down on the counter. "The humble abode. Make yourself at home – _mi chez_ is _tu chez_."

Jesse shoots him a look like he should be ashamed of himself.

"Too much?"

"Even _I'm_ not dumb enough to think that's right."

"Jesse – you wound me," he says, seriously. "Language is a living organism – who are we mere charlatans to dictate what's right and wrong?"

Jesse rolls his eyes, fights a smile, and tries not to be too obvious about taking it all in.

Saul wonders what his townhome must look like to Jesse – how it stacks up against his expectations.

It's admittedly a little empty, a little sterile: an open layout with high ceilings, furnished with selections from the type of showroom that lets you buy the whole room in a package, right down to the hand-painted pot and succulent. There are only a few corners of the place containing things that didn't come as a money-saving set: the kitchen with tools that had been curated over what felt like several lifetimes, the bedroom with special pillows that kept Saul's neck from aching, the heavy crystal decanter that had been a gift from a colleague that he couldn’t bear himself to donate to Goodwill.

Not a knick-knack or framed picture in sight -- because that's how it is when you reinvent yourself a few times over. There are bad soap opera sets with more character, and if Saul hadn't decorated it like this on purpose, he'd have half a mind to be self-conscious about bringing Jesse over.

Jesse takes it all in while simultaneously trying not to stare and it's exactly as endearing as Saul had imagined it would be.

Saul makes himself busy in the kitchen, leaning into the fridge to retrieve two beers, opening one and passing it to Jesse over the bar. His blue eyes are wide and glossy when he takes it, and it strikes Saul how _small_ Jesse is as he looks around the townhome.

Not just physically small – because of course he is shorter than Saul and he's narrower than the average kid his age and Saul is certainly aware of that, seeing him in real clothes for the first time in _ever_. 

But here in Saul's home, he seems folded down into himself, spare and efficient and contained as he takes in the neglected potted plants and the granite countertops and the nice big throw rug that the lawyer had reluctantly accepted from a client who couldn’t pay a year ago.

Jesse's smallness here in Saul's home makes Saul feel sloppy and scattered. He's oddly aware, in this moment, of the audacious life he has built for himself. The person Saul _used_ to be was small – or at least he had the capacity to be small in unguarded moments, or when he wasn't on a con.

But _Saul in present tense_ is bigger than big, vast and bright and taking up a space that expands out to every horizon in sight. Too bright and big and loud to grow or change or be vulnerable. Maybe too big to care about anyone. He squashes down the thought.

Saul is a billboard, he's a late-night commercial, he's a concept you call when you need to fit the pieces of your life back together so you can keep being a crook. But looking at Jesse, spine bent and hand around the sweating beer bottle, is like looking at some old scrapbook of the person Saul used to be.

Saul isn't sure if this makes him want to pack up the big things about himself and tuck them away or if it makes him want to pull the bigness out of Jesse, the things he knows, suddenly, are Jesse's own larger-than-large pieces that he wears like armor.

In the end he doesn't do either; Saul just basks in the realization that he's being allowed to see Jesse for a moment and begins to prepare dinner.

\---

 _So this is it_ , Jesse thinks, staring up at the understated lighting recessed in 12-foot ceilings, at the exposed beams and the furniture that all matches and the big windows with wide-slatted blinds that aren’t even dusty.

This is the end of the good thing they had – the crashing together that helped them both forget the desert sprawling out many miles away, home to too many anonymous graves, the unannounced office visits that ended in sweat and soft laughter like a secret, the sniping and joking and the facsimile of friendship that Jesse had found in the world's most unlikely confidant.

Jesse knows how to be tolerable in short bursts with people who aren't meth heads -- but a twelve-hour stretch is pushing it. It's not that Saul is intimidating to Jesse -- because he’s not. He’s a fucking dork. But he’s a dork with substance. Talking to him isn’t like shooting the shit with Mr. White, where the dynamic is understood and Jesse is no longer afraid of looking like an asshole. Unlike Walt, Saul talks to him like he’s... well, maybe not an equal. But he doesn’t _talk down_ to Jesse -- not yet.

Saul Goodman is a walking pop-culture dictionary, and it's only a matter of time before it's too tedious to explain his dumb jokes, before one too many references has flown over Jesse's head and Saul realizes that having him over was a mistake because they have nothing in common but a healthy libido and a talent for making bad decisions.

There's very little to know about Jesse Pinkman. Too bad Saul hadn't realized, before showing up on Jesse’s doorstep, that he already knows the whole thing.

When Jesse turns away from the living room, Saul has tied an apron around his waist and he's produced several brown packages and a cutting board. Christ. He really hadn't been joking about the eating-food-that-didn't-come-off-a-value-menu thing. The thought of dinner conversation looms as big as the Grand Canyon and Jesse finds himself taking big swallows of beer, crossing the floor to the other side of the bar, sidling up to Saul.

There's just one shot to salvage this mistake.

\---

"This place got a bedroom?" Jesse asks, a hand on Saul's hip. Saul puffs a laugh through his nose and raises his eyebrows.

"Hell of a pickup line," Saul says. He starts to unwrap their steaks, but stops when a tattooed hand holds him by one wrist. Jesse is there and he's not small anymore – he's expanding out to fill up the whole room, to block out Saul's vision of anything else – sandy hair and clear eyes and curling flushed lips.

"C'mon," Jesse says, hitching his chin up in something that's a half-challenge.

Saul stares at him, dumbstruck and Jesse's gaze falls to the counter.

"I want you," he says, almost shy. Fifty impulses dash up against the underside of his brain because this is _not_ where Saul saw the night going. He swallows hard against a dry throat and puts a steadying hand on Jesse’s shoulder.

"It's like some cruel cosmic joke that I'm actually saying this out loud but… Let's wait. Dinner, right? Why don't you sit down and actually relax for a minute? Doors are locked, cell phone's on. No need to rush. Take a deep breath, huh?"

He says it as gently as he can but he watches Jesse retreat.

"Yeah," Jesse says, shrinking under Saul's hand. Saul isn't sure what he's doing wrong but Jesse's slipping into the kind of blank expression he makes around Walt, and it's got Saul's stomach turning immediately. Whatever is happening, it’s not about sex.

"You look like I kicked your puppy or something," Saul says as Jesse shuffles to the other side of the bar. "I give you my word: sex is on the menu, here. But it's not a one-dish deal, alright?"

Jesse seems to think about it. The mask falls away again and Saul can breathe.

"I bet you have some freaky waterbed or something," Jesse says, staring down the neck of his beer.  

"Right," Saul says. "I gotta get you feeling committed with my culinary daring before I roll out the racecar bed. By then, you'll be so torn between feeling awe and pity that it'll be way easier to convince you to stay the night."

Jesse fights a smile before thinking better of it and then there it is, finally: white and clear and wide, the type of grin that could get you out of bed in the morning and keep you going all day. Saul beams back at him over the bar.

"So. How do you take your steak?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. Nothing is ever simple. This will be four chapters instead of three.

Jesse is two beers deep before he realizes there's no need to drink so fast.

The realization hits him strange and gradual, as if some invisible force that had a stranglehold on the front of his throat has gone slack and then played over his shoulders, his ribs, until he's enveloped and warm – and he'd chalk it up to the alcohol, but it takes more than two local brews to get him buzzed in this particular way, and he knows without thinking about it too hard that it's not alcohol but affection.

Saul is laughing so hard at Jesse's story that he's set down the tongs he just used to flip their steaks, laughing in big hiccupping spasms that make him need a free hand to grip the countertop and the other to wipe a tear from the corner of one eye, squeezed shut tight.

Jesse is recounting a recent misadventure with trying to catch a rat in his house – and the minute he'd opened his mouth, he'd regretted letting it slip that _he has rats_ because he can't really think of something  more low-rent than using vermin as an icebreaker. But Saul had smiled and nodded for him to go on as Jesse told the story in between swallows of beer.

He'd gained confidence as Saul looked up and huffed silent laughs in between chopping garlic. He'd grown more animated watching Saul's back shake under the teal shirt as he took down dinner plates from a cabinet. The choking force of anxiety had really finally let up when Saul let out that too-loud, helpless laugh at Jesse's punchline about the expensive, top-of-the-line rat trap he'd purchased but then felt too guilty to set.

"That's incredible," Saul says, raising an eyebrow once he's regained himself. "Haven't you heard of the Castle Doctrine?"

"Is that that show?" Jesse asks.

Saul snorts – but there's no malice behind it. He's been endlessly willing to explain every misunderstood reference so far.

"No, you're thinking of the Nathan Fillion gig that stopped being interesting once the protags finally hooked up," Saul says. "The Castle Doctrine is… well, a man's home is his castle – you're familiar with the idiom?"

Jesse nods.

"The Castle Doctrine negates your duty to retreat when you're assaulted in your abode. Not the strongest legal footing in New Mexico – plays better in Texas and Florida these days -- but I think any court in the land would rule it a justifiable raticide. In other words, morally, I think you're justified to shoot without remorse."

"Yeah, _shoot_ maybe but a tiny electric rat death chamber? Man, I don't know. Cruel and unusual."

"So you – what -- does this trap thing plug into the wall?"

"No, God, it really gives me the creeps," Jesse says. "The directions say put batteries in it. It electrocutes them. Like – do rats scream? What if she makes a sound?"

" _She?_ "

"I mean, the rat looks pretty small whenever I see it," Jesse says, shrugging. "Could be a she, I don't know. I'm tryin' to be fair with, like, gender stereotypes."

"Very magnanimous of you," Saul says, grinning. "You want another beer?"

"I think I'm good," Jesse says.

And he is. _They're_ good. Against all odds, this is ok.

\---

The steaks are resting, the meal is coming together, and Jesse has begun to settle in.

They'd set their various phones in a line together on the counter, close by enough to grab the moment one rings – just in case. Even with that compromise, Jesse had spent the first half hour shaking his leg and stealing glances over at the hunks of inert plastic and glass, as if they might miss something without constant vigilance. It's the same way Jesse's head swivels when he's walking down the street, the way he looks around to scope all possible exits when he enters into a new room.

That's Jesse's reality, and the fact that it's rare to see him without the shadow of a black eye or some fresh hurt means that Saul can't begrudge him the compulsive looks at their phones.

But gradually as they talk over the bar, the rusted spring inside of Jesse seems to uncoil. He laughs a little easier and watches Saul's hands with greater interest as he prepares their meal.

Saul's rinsing cool water over his hands when Jesse moves into the kitchen, opening drawers.

"Whatcha need?"

"Where do you keep the silverware?" Jesse asks. Saul pops open a drawer and Jesse steps forward, digging into the cutlery. Saul stands back to watch.

"You got, like, placemats you wanna use?" Jesse asks, shutting the drawer after he's gathered silverware.

Jesse Pinkman is setting the goddamned table.

"I don't think I've _ever_ owned a placemat," Saul says. "Hope that's not a disappointment."

"Total deal breaker," Jesse says, curling a lip with disdain. "I gotta rethink this whole thing." He walks past to pull two paper towels off the roll and then heads to the table.

Saul had planned on eating at the bar like he always does. He has never _actually_ eaten a meal at his dining room table – like so many things in the townhome, it is something he simply felt obligated to own – but if that's where Jesse wants to eat, he's not about to stop him.

"Nah man, who even owns placemats, you know?" Jesse says, moving a potted cactus over to the side of the table. "Other than, like, grandmas."

Saul wants to have a witty response – he really does want to hold up his end of the conversation – but before him is a scene that he needs to memorize and hold onto forever: Jesse folding cheap paper towels carefully into perfect squares, setting down silverware, and a fork _just so_ before he's satisfied.

Saul met Jesse's parents and he watched the way that they watched their son. To them, Jesse is an unexplainable blemish on an otherwise sterling record. They're just as eager to forget him as he is them. To say that it's a family dynamic Saul understands would be a gross understatement. If anything, he's had decades more practice than Jesse at navigating it.

But maybe the kid's a prodigy when it comes to self-invention, because Jesse's presence lulls Saul into forgetting them. His manner urges the people around Jesse now to forget he has a past, that he grew up in some suburb with a mom and a station wagon and yearbooks and opportunities. Saul is intimately familiar with the desire to – the ability to, in the end – make everyone forget that you're a real human being with baby pictures, that you believed in Santa Claus, that you took spelling tests and had grandparents.

When your family wants to forget you, it's mutually beneficial to craft a reality where you are something primal and lacking a natural genesis, something that sprang up from the earth fully formed and ready to wreak havoc.

Spend enough time with someone and the autobiography erodes. Someone had taught Jesse how to set the table – just the same way that someone had taught Saul how to boil water and cook dinner and make a guest comfortable.

To see this is a precious thing, and maybe nobody but Saul would know the significance, but the weight of it sits across his shoulders and Jesse's presence in this room, setting the table, feels profound in a way that makes Saul terrified of fucking all of this up.

"That smells, like, super serious," Jesse says when he catches Saul staring. "We gonna eat or you just here to torture me?"

\---

The food is just as incredible as it smells: thick steaks seared and crusty with a perfect medium center – and Saul hadn't even given him a hard time about the temperature request, which earned him instant brownie points – topped with crushed garlic and mushrooms and thyme that he'd fried in the pan.

Jesse closes his eyes and moans around the first bite – and it's not just for show. The dish is savory and flavorful and perfect.

"Hey," Saul says, holding a fork towards him accusingly. "Quit with the porn sounds."

"If you didn't want me to lose it at the table, you shouldn't've cooked such a bangin' steak," Jesse says quickly. Saul looks smug as he cuts a bite.

"Yeah, yeah, tuck yourself back in and eat, Ron Jeremy."

Jesse had turned his nose up at the broccolini – whatever that was – that Saul had arranged on the plate, but even the vegetables are incredible. Jesse keeps waiting for something to be less than outrageously good as he samples everything Saul has prepared. It simply doesn't happen.

"I always saw you as more of a takeout guy," Jesse says, reminding himself internally not to inhale the food quite as quickly as he'd like to. "No offense."

"None taken," Saul says after puffing a laugh through his nose. "Truth be told, I _am_ a connoisseur of Styrofoam-clad meals most nights, but I learned early on that there are fewer ways faster to someone's good graces than a well-cooked steak."

"What about vegetarians?" Jesse asks, hitching an eyebrow.

"Do vegetarians _really_ exist in real life?" Saul asks. "And moreover – why would I want to _impress_ someone with such clearly compromised judgment?"

Jesse rolls his eyes.

"A culinary tastemaker like yourself, though," Saul says, gesturing with a steak knife. "I knew I had to bring my A-game."

"I think you got me confused with some other date. I'd've been impressed with Chinese takeout from any place that didn't make the ABQ roach report," Jesse says. Saul smirks.

"How was I supposed to know that all I had to do was produce the uncooked steaks and you'd already be trying to get into my pants?" Saul asks. "Don't think I haven't noted just how _easy_ you are for the future."

Jesse kicks him softly in the shin under the table and Saul issues a frown and a fond, "Hey, watch it."

Their conversation _flows_ somehow in a way that Jesse hasn't enjoyed since – and he stops himself there.

No reason to look into the past. Suffice it to say it's been a long time since he's talked to anyone this easily.

Saul _makes_ it easy. He doesn't run up against any of Jesse's barriers – no questions about his past, no talk about the future. He gives all of those dark and private parts of Jesse's life a wide berth, and they spar back and forth over thoughts in the present tense. It's easy to forget who they are outside of this room, to forget about Mike somewhere behind his tinted windshield and the five cell phones sitting on the kitchen counter like timebombs.

Saul listens to Jesse without the lining of annoyance at the edge of his responses that Jesse had first learned to detect over the dinner table with his parents, later over joints with his friends, and eventually over the workings of the lab with Mr. White. There's nothing in Saul's posture telling Jesse to hurry up and get to the point when he speaks, and nothing in his laughter that sounds forced.

He can't seem to stop himself from being a detective in search of evidence that Saul is weary of his presence. Force of habit. But it gets easier and easier to believe in the idea that maybe Saul does _enjoy_ – not just tolerate – his company.

\---

Making Jesse Pinkman cum had, in recent weeks, shot to the top of the list of Saul's favorite pursuits. But here over the table, there's a new interest that's making its way to number one: making Jesse Pinkman _laugh._

Saul's lost count of the good, wracking laughs he's elicited out of the other party since they arrived, but every time Jesse comes up for air after one, he shakes his head and looks at Saul with the sort of gaze that says _I can't believe what a moron you are and I can't believe that I like it_.

Age seems to slough off of them both as they talk. It's been so long since real conversation felt like anything but a minefield. Unlike in their stolen conversations in between fucking and pretending like they hadn't just been fucking, Jesse doesn't retreat from compliments or – though he does still roll his eyes – from Saul's shameless and near-constant flirting.

Saul's face hurts from smiling and he realizes that he could shoot the shit like this all night. The easy conversation doesn't exactly extinguish the instinct he has to treat Jesse like a feral cat that's been half-drowned and chased out of one too many gardens, but it at least lessens it to some degree.

As the contents of their dinner plates disappear, Saul is struck that _this_ is what conversation is supposed to be. Not the constant play of trying to impress someone while simultaneously covering your ass. Not a drone of dual monologues that only pause momentarily while one party waits for their next turn to speak. It should be like this. Like trying to make Jesse laugh so hard he has to drag a hand over his face and look at the wall until he regains his composure.

How long had he waited for something he didn't even know he needed?

All of the air seems to go out of the room and Saul forgets what he was going to say. This is dangerous. Jesse is smirking and running a hand through his hair, eyes heavy-lidded, phones forgotten about. It's not a con, he realizes. He's not working Jesse or convincing him of anything. But in wanting to help Jesse let his guard down, Saul has _completely_ abandoned his own.

There's no time to linger on the thought because Jesse is up and retrieving their empty plates before Saul has time to protest.

"Hey, relax, c'mon," Saul says, getting up.

"Nah man, you cooked," Jesse says. "Let me wash a dish, goddamn."

\---

When the dishes are done, Jesse asks where he can smoke and Saul pulls back a heavy sliding glass door off the living room, gesturing grandly to a tiny balcony. Jesse steps out and, when Saul doesn't follow, closes the door behind himself. The balcony is small and situated on the back of the townhome, looking out over the checkerboard of residential streets and back yards and pools. There's a not-quite-full moon that makes everything just light enough to see, and the neighborhood blocks surrounding him thrum with quiet life.

There's a layer of relief when Jesse lights up, not only because he'd gone for hours without smoking but also because he'd made it through the pack of methols and he's back to his normal brand today.

Everything feels vaguely like Jesse has stepped into an alternate universe, and the cigarette gives him a little headrush. Alone now on the strange little balcony with a vantage point he's never enjoyed before over Albuquerque, Jesse feels borderless – like the pieces that make him up have expanded past the outlines they're allowed. It's a confluence of physical and mental strangeness that has him half-dizzy and feeling like perhaps in this moment he's not entirely real.

He takes a rough draw and then sucks cool air on top of it to burn his throat on purpose, and while it grounds him, he still feels _off_.

Jesse could do this more often, if he's allowed.

Talking and being in a real house. It hasn't been the disaster he'd geared up for.

He smokes and tries not to reflect too deeply on any of it – to just watch the world.

He reaches the filter and from force of habit, he squeezes the cigarette just above the ash and cherry so that he can pocket the butt. But as he prepares to drop the ash and the little strings of tobacco off the balcony, he sees an ashtray – clean and unused and placed there at the corner.

Saul had bought an _ashtray_ for him to use. Christ.

Jesse stoops to drop the butt – and in the same instant, Saul is dragging the sliding door open and the quiet night becomes a cacophony of the sticky door track and Saul's movements and tinny music that's coming from somewhere.

"You're ringing," Saul says, holding out one of Jesse's phones. Jesse's breath catches.

"Is it--?"

Saul shrugs – and he's only barely hiding the panic on his face as he shakes the phone a little, urging Jesse to take it. The air is electric and crackling and Jesse bites down on his bottom lip hard before accepting the phone, accepting the fact that the night is probably over now and they'll need to scramble to fix this fucking mess they've created for themselves.

He turns away from Saul, who doesn't move to go back inside, and faces the night.

The specter of Mr. White, which they have so successfully danced around and avoided, is about to be conjured up as he unlocks the phone and holds it to his ear.

"Yo."

"Heyyy Jesse!"

Jesse lets out a huge breath he didn't realize he was holding and slumps as the stale air comes out of him.

"Badger, Jesus," he says. "You don't fucking text anymore?"

"I'm driving! Gotta think about safety, yo. Arrive alive."

Jesse turns back to Saul, letting his back fall against the railing. The other man's relief is palpable.

"So, what's up?"

Badger starts talking on the other end of the line but Jesse doesn't hear the first word – because he's actually _looking_ at Saul now.

While Jesse was out smoking, Saul had changed out of his work clothes. It had never really occurred to Jesse that the man owns anything _other_ than work clothes, but the evidence is right here in a worn-in blue shirt with a stretched-to-shit collar and dark jeans. He looks like a different human being than the one Jesse had entered the townhouse with – and if Jesse passed him on the street right now, he might not have even recognized Saul. He'd assumed clashing Technicolor was just part of his goddamned DNA, but apparently Saul owns at least a few items of clothing that aren't garish and polyester.

He looks older. But he looks _good._ With a visceral little throb, Jesse thinks about stripping the distinctly-un-Saul clothes off of Saul and sitting on his lap on the nice leather couch inside.

"So you wanna meet me there or what?" Badger says after a pause. "They got those quesadillas with hella sour cream."

"Uh, shit man, I'm kinda tied up tonight," Jesse says lamely, realizing he has no idea what he's even turning down at this point but also admitting to himself that it couldn't possibly hold a candle to _this._

"OK… so…?"

"What about, like, Tuesday?" Jesse says. "I don't know – will you text me later?"

"Taco Tuesday! Alright man that's thinkin," Badger says, apparently delighted. "That's a _date_ son!"

"Right, it's a date, Badger," Jesse says, rolling his eyes.

"Peace!"

Jesse hangs up the phone and stuffs it in a pocket. Saul is smiling at him.

"A date with Badger? You steppin' out on me already?"

Jesse doesn't bother grimacing at the stupid teasing or rolling his eyes for the eight hundredth time tonight. He steps forward to close the distance between them and drags Saul into a kiss, hands wandering immediately, appreciating the novelty of how his body feels with a t-shirt over it instead of several thick layers of formal clothes.

With their standard uniforms of suits and hoodies, there are usually so many layers of fabric between the two of them – garments they never completely shed because there was never time – that it feels to Jesse as if they're almost naked here, they're so much closer than usual. There are no buttons and zippers to dig in uncomfortably as Saul pulls Jesse against him by the waist. He can feel Saul's warmth, the rise of his chest, the fingertips appreciating the curve of his spine.

They break for air and Jesse wants to be _closer_ than this – and for once it's not the product of a hard-on or teasing. He feels like he won't be satisfied until there's no barrier – flimsy or not – until there's nothing stopping him from squeezing Saul as hard as he can, like only _then_ can he breathe again.

"Inside?" Jesse suggests into the fabric over Saul's chest. When he doesn't respond, Jesse pulls back to look up. Saul's not smiling. He's looking at Jesse intently with an expression Jesse's never seen before, sad but otherwise inscrutable – and the moment of dissociation Jesse felt before the phone call seems to extend out to touch this moment, now, too, because Saul looks like someone else.

Jesse is about to ask what's wrong when his eyelids dip and his lips part and his chin drops almost imperceptibly and Saul is back – soft and different and still not smiling, maybe, but _Saul_.

"Yeah," he says. "Inside."


End file.
